Obama’s Edited Mateen Transcript Is a Huge Propaganda Victory for the Islamic State

Police Photo20 Jun 2016

After a morning of outrage and controversy over its announced decision to scrub references to ISIS and Islam from jihadi Omar Mateen’s 911 call, what the Obama Administration actually released is not an edited transcript. It is pure fantasy, an act of Stalinist censorship with only the most distant relationship to what Mateen actually said.

It is a crude attempt to keep the Orlando narrative focused on Democrats’ preferred enemies, i.e. law-abiding Americans who had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack. It is a crude effort to keep the Administration’s patently false “self-radicalized lone-wolf extremist” narrative alive. It is an insult to every citizen of the United States, because the Administration thinks you can’t handle the truth – they clearly regard us as more of a threat than the actual terrorists and their allies.

Worst of all, the Obama Administration has handed the Islamic State a major propaganda coup. The “redactions” in this “partial transcript” are so clumsy and obvious that it will take ISIS supporters only a few minutes to “fix” it. They will portray the transcript as proof that the weak American government is terrified of them, and fearful of the truth.

Islamic extremists love to present themselves as bold tellers of truth, campaigning against timid and dishonest Western governments. Obama’s Justice Department just gave them high-octane fuel for their propaganda engine.

Here is the edited transcript released by the FBI. “OD” is the Orlando police dispatcher, while “OM” is terrorist Omar Mateen:

OD: Emergency 911, this is being recorded.

OM: In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficial [in Arabic]

OD: What?

OM: Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [in Arabic]. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.

OD: What’s your name?

OM: My name is I pledge of allegiance to [omitted].

OD: Ok, What’s your name?

OM: I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted].

OD: Alright, where are you at?

OM: In Orlando.

OD: Where in Orlando?

He did not say “God the Merciful” or “prophet of God.” We all know exactly what words he used. The words have been changed by the Ministry of Propaganda, to buttress the official narrative that Islamic terrorism has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. That’s not a “redaction,” it’s a lie.

Later, Mateen had three exchanges with the Orlando Police Department’s Crisis Negotiation Team, which the FBI release summarizes as follows:

In these calls, the shooter, who identified himself as an Islamic soldier, told the crisis negotiator that he was the person who pledged his allegiance to [omitted], and told the negotiator to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq and that is why he was “out here right now.”

When the crisis negotiator asked the shooter what he had done, the shooter stated, “No, you already know what I did.” The shooter continued, stating, “There is some vehicle outside that has some bombs, just to let you know. You people are gonna get it, and I’m gonna ignite it if they try to do anything stupid.”

Later in the call with the crisis negotiator, the shooter stated that he had a vest, and further described it as the kind they “used in France.” The shooter later stated, “In the next few days, you’re going to see more of this type of action going on.” The shooter hung up and multiple attempts to get in touch with him were unsuccessful.

Shouldn’t it say that Mateen “identified himself as an [omitted] soldier?” Someone slipped up there.

It is ridiculously obvious what was said during the “omitted” passages, especially to anyone with cursory knowledge of the Islamic State “caliphate” and the man its operatives swear allegiance to, “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. By omitting the names of ISIS and Baghdadi, the Administration makes itself look weak and ineffectual to Muslims within the ISIS sphere of influence. They are drawing more attention to what they refuse to admit, not less.

“We are trying not to revictimize those who went through that horror,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch claimed on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday. How does it honor the victims to refuse to talk honestly about who killed them, and why, especially when such a frank discussion is crucial to preventing more American deaths?

Just a few days ago, President Obama delivered a bizarre tirade about how words like “radical Islam” do not matter, and there is no “magic to the phrase.” Clearly his Administration does think words matter a great deal, and there is magic to the phrase, or they would not have made fools of themselves by applying such crude edits to the Mateen transcript.

These edits are not really directed at Muslims, radical or moderate, because Muslims will have no difficulty deducing what was actually said. The edits are directed at the loathsome American people, forever teetering on the edge of a savage “anti-Muslim backlash.” The Administration does not want the knuckle-dragging rubes out in flyover country getting all lathered up over Mateen’s actual words.

They also need to protect the political narrative Democrats have worked so hard to build around the Orlando attack, and words definitely do have power in politics. It is much harder for Democrats to push idiotic nonsense about the NRA and anti-gay Christian bigots being the real culprits behind the attack, when people can read – or, much worse, actually hear – Mateen talking about the prophet of Allah, and his pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“He talked about his pledges of allegiance to a terrorist group. He talked about his motivations for why he was claiming at that time he was committing this horrific act. He talked about American policy in some ways,” Lynch said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Democrats understand that if the American public reads or hears Mateen doing those things, in his own words, they will have a much harder time portraying him as a puppet of the homophobic Christian right, or a helpless pawn of the National Rifle Association’s gun fever.

Evidence continues to accumulate that politically correct blindness allowed Mateen to prepare for his deadly attack with impunity. For years, he said things that P.C. culture makes people terrified to hear, or act upon, because they’re terrified of being called bigots or Islamophobes.

There was plenty of sheer bureaucratic incompetence on display too, including yesterday’s revelation from the Wall Street Journalthat Mateen’s employer, the G4S security firm, made some “clerical errors” with his mental health documents – such as attributing his tests to a psychologist who had nothing to do with them.

The company also insisted that “it is not our policy – nor the policy of any security provider or law enforcement agency that we are aware of – to demand psychological exams” after incidents like Mateen being interviewed by the FBI for making threatening statements to his co-workers in 2013. Maybe that should be policy, because it is increasingly clear that Mateen was able to deflect scrutiny by claiming he was victimized because he was a Muslim. He knew those were the magic words the entire system was waiting to hear.

Editing the transcripts of Mateen’s 911 call plays into this narrative about Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry being the greatest danger America faces. The Administration demonstrates, every chance it gets, that it thinks flyover country is full of dangerous bigots who need only a little prodding to burn down the nearest mosque. The Administration has absolutely no problem profiling them.

If Mateen had sworn allegiance to a group Democrats regard as an enemy, like the Tea Party, who doubts that we’d not only have unedited transcripts in hand, but DOJ would have found a way to “leak” some audio to the media by now?